THE COMMON COUNCIL OF SANDWICH

The attempt in various boroughs to create a municipal house of commons for the protection of popular liberties is so striking a fact in the town history of the fifteenth century that, for the sake of again observing the experiment under a new set of conditions, we may take one last example of the building up of a representative council. The case of Sandwich differs considerably from that either of Norwich or of Lynn, though one significant fact is common to all three boroughs. In each of these towns the effort to work out the new constitution was frustrated; and, singularly enough, it was frustrated in every case, not by any evidence of inherent weakness in the scheme itself, but by the operation of external and accidental causes. In Norwich the system was possibly wrecked by difficulties in the working of what we may call foreign affairs—that is by the ill-defined and impossible relations of the town to the country, when the town claimed to interfere with interests over which its authority was limited, while these interests had no regular representation in its councils, so that intrigue came in to replace recognized and orderly influence, and the natural distinctions of parties within the town were submerged in factions more or less external and artificial, and in the corrupt political ambitions to which these gave opportunity. In Lynn an equally artificial state of parties was created and maintained by the miniature strife between the Church as a temporal power and the civil government. The existence of a large body of commons delivered by the Bishop from taking up the just burdens of citizenship, as dependents on his protection, withdrawn from a full share in the responsibilities of their fellow-townsmen and used as a sort of occupying army for the maintenance of his rights over the borough, was fatal to the healthy developement of municipal self-government. But in Sandwich an altogether new problem is suggested—the problem of local self-government in the members of a confederated state, in which the several communities might tend towards democracy while the central administration remained the stronghold of aristocratic tradition.

For Sandwich must not be considered as if it stood alone like Norwich, independent and self-contained. Under the constitution of the Cinque Ports, as we have seen, certain weighty matters, such as military defence, finance, foreign trade and foreign traders, the higher matters of justice, and so on, were under a central government represented either at Dover or at the Brodhull, and the several towns were mainly concerned with local affairs. It is possible that in the conduct of daily business of a comparatively simple kind there was less necessity than in the greater boroughs for the supremacy of experts, and apparently administration did not so soon harden into the despotism of an oligarchy. There was much, moreover, which was favourable to popular movements in the general conditions of Kent and Sussex, which, even as early as the twelfth century, were centres of important mining and manufacturing industries, and in whose midst there arose more than once movements of liberal and radical thought like those which in our days have come from the coal-fields and iron mines of the north. The trading vessels which put out from the ports across the German Ocean kept the people in constant touch with the commercial towns of the north European coast where municipal life was most vigorous and enduring. And of the strangers to whom Sandwich gave shelter, till at last almost a third of its streets were occupied by foreigners, the main body were traders or artizans from the Netherlands who, wherever they sought refuge after their desperate battle against oligarchy in their own country, must have carried with them their sturdy creed of independence and freedom of political discussion, and would have inevitably ranged themselves on the popular side of town politics, whether as enfranchised voters or as unenfranchised talkers.

Thus the men of the Cinque Ports long preserved a fine tradition of vigorous independence; and in Sandwich, as in the other ports, the burghers actually maintained in practice something of the early democratic theory of government. The mayor, jurats, and other officers, elected by the whole commonalty,[856] carried on the administrative and judicial work, but when a question arose as to the making of new laws or the granting of cesses the whole people were called together to a hornblowing,[857] and “the mayor and commonalty at a common assembly may make such decrees as they think proper.” Any gathering of freemen, no matter how small, who assembled with the mayor, was “deemed a meeting of the whole body,” and its ordinances were consequently binding; but the mayor might send the common wardman, or whom he pleased, to shut up all the windows of cellars and shops and so forcibly persuade dealers and artizans to join the congregation.[858]

This mode of government by a single council of twelve checked by the referendum lasted unchanged till the middle of the fifteenth century; and it was certainly less difficult for the system that in larger boroughs so quickly developed into the rule of a plutocracy, to keep its democratic character in a small community which had only increased from the three hundred and eighty-three inhabited houses of the Conqueror’s time to four hundred and twenty households in 1565,[859] and in which the forces that made for freedom and popular government were strong. It would seem indeed that the mayor’s difficulty was not so much to force the freemen to fulfil their civic duties, as to check the too active zeal of inhabitants not enfranchised, and Sandwich had to reiterate its laws that only free “barons,” indwellers, and householders, should attend at elections, and at last had to inflict on any offender a fine of 21d. and the loss of his upper garment.[860]

In the middle of the fifteenth century, however, there was a movement to amend the primitive constitution of the town. The first change was probably intended to bring Sandwich into harmony with the prevailing fashion. In 1437 its eight wards were made into twelve, and a jurat sat over each, with power to appoint every year his own constable and deputy constable.[861] Other reforms followed under the auspices of Richard Cok, who was mayor five times in thirteen years, and who was again chosen for the sixth time in 1470 to make peace with Edward the Fourth after his triumph over Henry the Sixth.[862] During his first mayoralty (in 1441) an order was issued that no one might sit on the bench at court but the mayor, the jurats, and the king’s bailiff; in other words the dignity of the upper chamber was asserted, and all intrusion and interference with its consultations made impossible. The increasing authority of the council was immediately met by an organization of the commons to protect their own interests, such as we have seen at Norwich and Lynn half a century earlier. During Cok’s fifth term of office, in 1454, a representative council of seventy commons was formed, who, with the consent of the mayor and jurats, were to make all manner of elections and all scots and lots. In this way about one citizen householder out of every six was given a share in the government—a scheme so different from that of either Norwich or Lynn that it suggests how far Sandwich must have outstripped those towns in the habit of popular government.

From this time we can trace a steady conflict between the two parties in the town, the official or governing class and the commonalty. The common council was remodelled ten years later, in 1464, and its members reduced to thirty-six. It is very probable that this change was brought about by the policy of the governing class; for at the same time the mayor and jurats set up a claim to be the authoritative judges of the fitness of men sent by the commonalty to serve as councillors, and it was ordained that the people should henceforth nominate forty-eight persons, sixteen out of each parish, and that the mayor and jurats should then choose thirty-six of these to be of the common council. Their triumph, however, was short, for in 1471, immediately after Cok’s last mayoralty, the controlling choice of mayor and jurats was set aside, and it was decided that the commonalty should elect for themselves, without any interference or dictation, twelve men from each of the three parishes to be of the common council, to consult with the mayor and jurats “whenever the mayor pleases” for the benefit and utility of the town, and to make and establish decrees for its profit.[863]

For over half a century the democratic party had their way. Popular representation was recognized as part of the Sandwich constitution, and so far as the town itself was concerned, it would seem that liberal ideas of government and civic freedom prevailed in a far greater degree than in either Norwich or Lynn. All went well till the time of Henry the Eighth. Then a singular danger declared itself, and the story of the sixteenth century is that of the ruin of popular liberties in Sandwich. The governing class had in each of the Cinque Ports a source of peculiar strength. Out-numbered and out-voted as they might be in each separate port, they reigned supreme in the Brodhull court, where their majority was certain, and where they could carry matters with a high hand; and it was there that the governing bodies of the various ports, all alike threatened with public criticism of their acts and limitation of their powers, formed a combination for the protection of their common interests. All devices to establish freely elected common councils, or any representative bodies to express popular opinion, received their quietus at the Brodhull court in 1526. The respectable assembly of mayors, jurats, and delegates there gathered passed a resolution that the duties of electing the mayor and jurats, receiving the king’s bailiff, and appointing the bailiffs to Yarmouth, should be given over in each port to a committee of thirty-seven persons; and in each corporate town to a body of twenty-four, who were to be nominated by the mayor and jurats.[864] In 1528 a new mayor of Sandwich was elected after the new fashion, the whole commonalty nominating three jurats, one of whom was then chosen by the appointed committee of thirty-seven.[865] That the freemen did not give up their rights without a fight we may judge from the fact that in 1535 they again elected their mayor after the ancient custom of the town; but it was a losing battle, and as a matter of fact no popular liberties survived this century. The common council was reduced to twenty-four members, and both the upper and lower councils alike were appointed by the mayor and jurats. The election of the mayor was taken from the people, and the jurats succeeded in turn to the post by order of seniority.[866] Finally even the right of the commons to vote at assemblies was taken from them in 1595, to be restored in 1599, and again taken away “for their insolence and disorder” in 1603.

In Sandwich, therefore, it is obvious that the reform movement failed, not through inherent vice or defect of its own, but by the overpowering pressure of an external force—on this occasion by the federal council of the united states that made up the confederation of the Cinque Ports. No doubt the easy victory of the whole confederation was made possible by the decaying fortunes of the town; for at the time of its defeat the vigour and the glory of Sandwich had departed. Works for the preservation of the port had been constantly going on since the thirteenth century when the artificial canal known as the Delf was dug, and put under the charge of overseers; though after a brave struggle of two hundred years diggers and sluice-makers could no longer hold their own against winds and sands that silted up their harbour. In 1483 the town, under the threat of breaking up the whole wall they had built, ordered the gentlemen and yeomen of the country who had pastures by the stream to scour their dykes and make sluices; though neither the forced efforts of the county squires, nor the royal grant to the town in 1548 of all the plate and treasures of the parish churches to carry on the works of the harbour;[867] nor a later Act of Parliament for deepening the Stour, could rescue Sandwich from its doom. In its decrepitude liberty slipped from its grasp. But the disaster of a later time must not wholly obscure with its shadow the records of days when Sandwich was rejoicing in brighter fortunes. If in the decay of its prosperity and hope the oligarchy fixed their yoke on the neck of the people, and inaugurated the rule of the plutocrats, their victory was not quickly won; for throughout the fifteenth century, as we have seen, when by the necessity of the times the question of stricter organization of public life was here as elsewhere forced into prominence, the commons of Sandwich neither renounced their rights to self-government, nor failed to take an adequate part in moulding the new constitution. It is indeed not impossible that the oligarchic congregation of the Brodhull mainly drew its force for the suppression of popular independence from the support or even the instigation of the Court; for we can easily understand that at a time when under the policy of the Tudors England figured as a great power in Europe, laden with obligations and with hatreds, her ministers were driven to look anxiously to her first line of defence against foreign foes. The policy of securing the main ports in the hands of a little group of loyal officials, easily controlled from headquarters, and no friends to common riots or rebellions, must inevitably have followed the revival of the ancient tradition which saw in the safety of the realm the whole purpose of the Cinque Port confederation.